The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra can with justification be regarded as ‘Sibelius’s own orchestra’, as it was this orchestra, usually conducted by the composer, that premièred most of his major works. On this disc of three such pieces, the orchestra is conducted by Susanna Malkki; the recording follows on from their three acclaimed albums devoted to the music of Bartók.

Although they were all later revised, the three works on this recording all originated within a very short period in Sibelius’s career: the years 1893–96, a time when he was beginning to establish himself as a composer and a time of national awakening.

One of his most popular works, the Karelia Suite is drawn from a series of tableaux that evoked events in the history of Karelia, the region where Finland and Russia meet. In late 19th-century Finland, the promotion of Karelian folk culture was both fashionable and politically relevant. The short suite Rakastava [The Lover] is a subtle reworking of a work for male voices based on lyrical poems from the collection Kanteletar; Sibelius often conducted it in concert. Sibelius often drew inspiration from the Finnish national epic Kalevala, and episodes from this poem provide the subject matter of Lemminkainen, a substantial four-movement suite (including the captivating Swan of Tuonela) that recounts the adventures of a daredevil hero, a sort of Nordic Don Juan.

REVIEWS:

Mälkki and the orchestra remarkably conjure the dark, swirling soundworld of ‘Lemminkäinen in Tuonela’ (the Hades of Finnish legend). And the concluding ‘Lemminkäinen’s Return’ canters along in roistering style.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Susanna Mälkki and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra produce wellcrafted, beautifully detailed accounts on a par with rival versions – including the Helsinki orchestra’s own with Segerstam (with warm Ondine sound) from the mid-1990s.

-- Gramophone

Lyric Opera of Kansas City presents the world-premiere recording of Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell’s opera The Shining (2016). Based on the novel by Stephen King, this opera “elevates the tale from horror story to a human drama” (Wall Street Journal) thanks to Moravec’s atmospheric, electrifying score and Campbell’s deft libretto.

While staged performances have received critical and public acclaim, this engaging masterpiece can now be enjoyed as a recording for the first time. The Kansas City Symphony and Lyric Opera of Kansas City Chorus are led by the eminent conductor Gerard Schwarz and join forces with an excellent cast of soloists. The main role of Jack Torrance is interpreted by Edward Parks, who was part of the Grammy-winning recording of Mason Bate’s The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, released on Pentatone in 2018.

German-American composer Lukas Foss transformed the Buffalo Philharmonic into an adventurous and world-renowned orchestra during his tenure as music director, and he was a mentor to the orchestra’s current music director, JoAnn Falletta, at the start of her career. This album celebrates the 100th anniversary of Foss’s birth with four works, including the lyrical Symphony No. 1 and the Renaissance Concerto.

REVIEW:

Foss's music is much like the man, full of charm, brilliance, playfulness, deep seriousness, and bewildering variety. This resonant, well-filled recording gives us three early works from the 1940s, with colorful solo playing by flautist Amy Porter and violinist Nikki Chooi. The Ode, an expression of grief and admiration for men who died in World War II, begins with a funereal tread but builds in excitement, with a soaring climax showing off the excellent Buffalo brass and ending on a serene major chord.

A delightful contrast is The Renaissance Concerto, a neo-baroque piece based partly on Rameau and Monteverdi. The Three American Pieces, influenced by what Foss calls the “open-air” sound of Copland, display Foss’s lyricism and fondness for jazzy syncopation. The latter also erupts in the scherzo of his Symphony 1, which is based on classical form and has a satisfying symmetry. The finale, which exudes youthful confidence and optimism, revisits motifs from the opening movement, launches an exciting fugue for strings, and builds to a majestic culmination on an ecstatic major chord, ending a winning album with a bang.

— American Record Guide

John Adams’ City Noir was inspired by the cultural and social history of Los Angeles, with the composer himself calling it ‘an imaginary film score’, while Fearful Symmetries exemplifies his steamroller motor rhythms. The album ends with a capricious ‘Spider Dance’ of memorable rhythmic drive – a work dedicated to Marin Alsop who leads the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in these performances.

REVIEWS:

Marin Alsop has been quietly championing John Adams abroad—and now at the Met Opera conducting his El Nino— for decades. A new Naxos recording with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra demonstrates her flair and feeling for his distinctive idiom. City Noir, premiered by the LA Phil in 2009, is a vivid, multi-textured score inspired by mid-20th century urban California. With its jazz inflections and brooding canvases, the debt to the City of Angels and film noir are equally clear. This is the work’s third recording but well worth acquiring for Alsop’s theatrical bite and detailed interpretation. Punchier than Robertson and livelier than Dudamel (though Robertson’s ravishing sonics make for essential listening), she holds the attention with a sure eye for the work’s architectural twists and turns. The companion piece is Fearful Symmetries from 1988, one of Adams’s most infectious scores and yet only receiving its second outing on disc. Alsop takes the chugging basic pulse a tad faster than the composer’s own recording without sacrificing any of the infinite variety to be found in Adams’s orchestral details. It’s a joyous, carefree work and beautifully recorded. The same goes for the recorded premiere of Lola Montez Does the Spider Dance. Happily rehabilitated after getting the chop from Girls of the Golden West, this six-minute essay in wriggling cross rhythms is laced with sardonic wit.

-- Musical America (Clive Paget)

John Adams’s City Noir has been pretty well represented on disc in the fifteen years since its 2009 premiere: Marin Alsop’s new recording of the score with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony is the work’s fourth. In general, this celebration of the city of Los Angeles benefits from her approach. It’s swift and characterful...its structure emerges nicely intact in Alsop’s hands. The central “The Song is for You” boasts a series of idiomatic solos (especially from alto saxophone and trombone), at times seeming to channel Gershwin. [The] ORF’s woodwinds, trumpets, and jazz drummer really shine here. By about any measure, this is some brash and chill Adams.

Even more welcome is the pairing’s account of Fearful Symmetries, a half-hour-long study in rhythm and texture that’s only been recorded once before. Granted, that earlier release was led by the composer and it’s aged well. But Alsop’s new take is downright invigorating. The conductor brings a strong sense of drive to the music, drawing out a beautiful blend of colors – from invitingly swooning saxophone quartet playing to unexpected synthesizer colors – from her forces. What’s more, hers is a reading that manages to vigorously illuminate the sophistication of Adams’s compositional language, circa 1988. It’s a keeper.

-- The Arts Fuse

Zoltán Kodály’s orchestral output is relatively small but brimming with Hungarian spirit. JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic (BPO) present one of the composer’s most popular works, the Háry János Suite, alongside Summer Evening and the Symphony in C major. Falletta and the BPO’s acclaimed previous Kodály album is on 8573838.

REVIEW:

This is JoAnn Falletta’s second recording for Naxos of music by Kodály and it is every bit as fine as that earlier one. It includes two works which deserve greater exposure than they have received. It also contains Kodály’s most popular orchestral piece, the Háry János Suite. There have been plenty of excellent accounts of this suite, particularly by such Hungarian conductors as István Kertész and Iván Fischer. Falletta holds her own against those, even if none I have heard surpasses Kertész in this music, including his 1964 recorded sound.

The primary reason to get this CD is the rarely performed Symphony in C, a piece that Kodály worked on over a long period beginning in the 1930s and completing only in 1957. It is an attractive and well-orchestrated work with memorable themes and characteristic of Kodály in its harmony and rhythms.

There is plenty of detail to be savoured and at the same time good, but not excessive reverberation. Another fine production from Naxos.

-- MusicWeb International

Apollo’s Fire’s founder and director Jeannette Sorrell is “a masterful musical storyteller” (Seen and Heard). The Maestra and her acclaimed baroque orchestra add to their distinguished AVIE discography that includes Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Messiah, with her own adaptation of the composer’s oratorio Israel in Egypt. This colorful orchestral showcase takes the listener on a biblical journey from the Israelites lamentations on the death of Joseph, to the frogs, locusts, disease and darkness that plague the Egyptians, to Moses’ miraculous parting of the Red Sea.

Unsuk Chin’s music is a magical realm: sometimes it unfolds labyrinths of innovative sounds and complex structures, then again moments of otherworldly beauty. Her astonishing ingenuity gives each work its own character – which makes the encounter with Chin’s music a "continuous adventure" for the Berlin Philharmonic.

For the orchestra, many highlights of this fruitful collaboration are linked to special memories: Chorós Chordón, for example, accompanied the Philharmonic on their last tour of Asia with Simon Rattle. This edition documents all the works by Unsuk Chin that have been performed by the Berlin Philharmonic to date.

In addition to the recordings on CD and Blu-ray and a bonus film, the hardcover edition features an attractively designed accompanying book with moiré effect art by Takahiro Kurashima, and introductory texts.

Grammy Award-winning, “velvet voiced” (NPR) baritone Will Liverman presents a recital program honoring women in classical music, past and present, on Show Me The Way, his second “passion project” recording for Cedille.

Praised as “nothing short of extraordinary” (Opera News), Liverman has curated a moving and poignant recital celebrating American female composers from 20th-century trailblazers Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, and Amy Cheney Beach to present-day composers commissioned for this program. This new album, Liverman’s second with longtime recital partner pianist Jonathan King, is inspired by and honors the singer’s mother, gospel singer Terry Liverman, and their mutual love of song. The Livermans perform together on recording for the first time in their own arrangement of Alma Bazel Androzzo’s cherished hymn If I Can Help Somebody.

Two new song cycles serve as pillars of the recording: Jasmine Barnes’ A Sable Jubilee with a newly commissioned libretto by Tesia Kwarteng that celebrates Black Joy, and Libby Larsen’s three movement Machine Head: Ted Burke Poems, depicting everyday American life. Liverman premiered the cycles in an “extraordinary recital… as meaningful in content as it was rich with his resonant voice—both elements impressive for their range” (Aspen Times). Liverman, “one of the most versatile singing artists performing today,” (Bachtrack) is joined by all-star special guests including J’Nai Bridges in a somber new work by Rene Orth and Renée Fleming in Sarah Kirkland Snider’s mysterious and affecting Everything That Ever Was. He sings a duet from Amy Beach’s rarely performed opera, Cabildo, with Nicole Cabell, featuring violinist Lady Jess and cellist Tahirah Whittington.

Also featured on the album are Jonathan King’s arrangement of Ella Fitzgerald and Chick Webb’s You Show Me The Way originally performed by the duo at New York’s Savoy Ballroom, as well as a new work, Spell to Turn the World Around,by Kamala Sankaram, with a text that calls awareness to the destruction caused by wildfires. This recording follows Liverman’s “devastatingly beautiful” (The Washington Post), Billboard chart-topping and Grammy-nominated Cedille album, Dreams of a New Day: Songs by Black Composers.

El Trio is a dream threesome of some of my favorite musicians, all whom have been in my various bands: Horacio ‘El Negro’ Hernández, one of the most versatile and in-demand drummers in the history of Cuban music and jazz; José Armando Gola, a great double bass player, composer, and an expert in every sense of the word who can adapt to any style; and John Beasley, a genius pianist, keyboardist, orchestrator, innovator, whose imagination takes me to another galaxy. El Trio’s sound is organic, contemporary, and supernova.- Chucho Valdés

The pieces in this album represent the Miró Quartet’s artistic home in many ways. The four works include two new commissions for the Miró by Kevin Puts and Caroline Shaw, as well as works by George Walker and Samuel Barber. The concept of home and our complex relation to it is woven in a variety of ways into all the music in this album: this music invites you to feel, reflect, and engage in Miró’s world. This is Miró second album.

"Waves and Particles" is Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning composer John Luther Adams’s beautifully shimmery, virtuosic string quartet, performed by the incredible, illustrious JACK Quartet. Adams’s music has been performed by such prominent ensembles as the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. JACK Quartet has been deemed “superheroes of the new music world” (Boston Globe) and “the go-to quartet for contemporary music, tying impeccable musicianship to intellectual ferocity” (The Washington Post).

Beaufort Scales is Grammy-nominee and Pulitzer finalist composer Christopher Cerrone’s lush, dramatic, alluring music for women’s voices and electronics, performed by the acclaimed Lorelei Ensemble. Its text is drawn from the Beaufort Wind Force Scale (an early-19th-century wind speed measure), as well as writings by Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Anne Carson. Cerrone’s music has been commissioned and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, LA Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, the Louisville Symphony, Third Coast Percussion, violinist Jennifer Koh, pianist Shai Wosner, and many other noted ensembles and individuals. The Lorelei Ensemble, praised for its “full-bodied and radiant sound” (The New York Times) and “stunning precision of harmony, intonation … spectacular virtuosity” (Gramophone), has recorded the music of numerous living composers, as well as historical works by William Billings, Guillaume Du Fay, Alfred Schnittke, Toru Takemitsu, and many others.

Four-time Grammy-winning sextet, Eighth Blackbird (8BB), "one of the smartest, most dynamic contemporary classical ensembles on the planet" (Chicago Tribune), presents the world premiere recording of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang's composition as explanation, based on Gertrude Stein's seminal 1926 lecture of the same name. Called "Super Chamber Music" by David Lang, this multidisciplinary work incorporates elements of chamber music, theater, and performance art; it has the groundbreaking ensemble not only performing the music, but also speaking and singing Stein's text.

For the performance, the 8BB players committed themselves to a rigorous education process, including lessons in acting, diction, and the art of theater. Musical America praised 8BB's live performance of Lang's work as "every bit as witty, circular, and self-referential as Stein's own prose; it's rare, not to mention utterly satisfying, to hear a work that so completely embodies it's text. To invoke Stein, one suspects Composition as Explanation will be a work of our time for many times to come."

In 2016, 8BB asked David Lang to propose a project that they could perform at the Chicago Arts Club in conjunction with the Club's centennial year. In his research, Lang discovered that Stein had spoken at the Club in 1934; this led him to employ Stein's text as the basis for the piece.

With an ever-increasing awareness of the excellence that defined her career, Florence Price is finally receiving the recognition that she deserves. Price won the Wanamaker Prize in 1932, and she was the first Black woman to have a symphony premiered by a major American orchestra. Price was a gifted student, pianist, and organist. She graduated from high school in Little Rock, AR, at age 14. At age 16, she graduated from the New England Conservatory (as the only double major in her class) with degrees in organ performance and piano pedagogy. Price wrote music for everyone– across a range of styles and abilities, and for a variety of forces. Beyond the Years hones in on Florence Price the composer of songs. ONEcomposer has cataloged nearly 150 of her songs (to date), only about half of which have been published.

Beyond the Years highlights Price’s affinity for themes of faith, nature, love, and loss. Amongst Price’s treasures in the archives at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, is her well worn copy of Vaccai: Practical Method of Italian Singing, a symbol of her fastidious commitment to writing idiomatically for the voice.

As performed by Karen Slack and Michelle Cann, these songs are receiving new life in the hands of two of the greatest artists of our generation.